An exciting step forward @Twelve

This month, we began an important conversation about the future of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) at Twelve. Considering that we currently have fewer than 500 employees, we’re a bit ahead of the curve in beginning these conversations now, but it’s important to start this work before we have accrued the kind of diversity “debt” that is common in tech. Because we want the diversity within our organization to align with the community Twelve serves (i.e. the world), we’re setting out to build DEIB practices, programs, and mindsets in our company’s infrastructure before we scale.?

While I’ve been a Talent leader for years, my own identity as a biracial woman of color has been at the core of my passion for this work. I care deeply about how peoples’ identities impact their access to opportunities, and I’m very glad to be part of an organization that understands DEIB is essential to building a successful product and company. In light of beginning this conversation internally, I wanted to share a bit externally about how we’re growing Twelve to be a place where all employees can thrive and how we’re thinking about our potential for future impact.

Where we’re going

Since our beginnings in 2015, Twelve’s co-founders—Etosha Cave, Kendra Kuhl, and Nicholas Flanders—have organically inspired our teams to be intentional about building diverse talent pipelines. Because of this foundation in Twelve’s belief system, our People Team was able to implement programs like pay equity, employee leveling, structured interviews, unconscious bias interviewer trainings, and identity-centric Slack groups from relatively early on in our company’s development. However, we’re now at the stage as an organization where we need to think more programmatically about our people experience, so we’re beginning to ask some big questions: How do we evolve our retention strategy to support our employees’ varying needs? How do we create a workplace environment that offers a positive experience for everyone? How do we develop our learning strategies such that every Twelve employee is better today than they were yesterday? How can we ensure everyone here has equal access to the advancement that’s best for their unique path??

One of the most important things I’ve learned in doing this work throughout my career is that there is no standardized way or formula for approaching DEIB. Every company has different needs, a different set of employees and leaders, and different objectives. There is no perfect “playbook,” and every solution must align with the company implementing it. Ultimately DEIB initiatives are about supporting the humans that make up an organization's ecosystem—and that looks and feels different everywhere. It’s worth paying attention to other company’s DEIB efforts to understand what has worked elsewhere, but to build programs that solve for the issues most impacting your employees…efforts must be tailored.?

How we’ll get there

At Twelve, we’re starting this process by listening. In the coming months—through focus groups, 1:1 interviews, and surveys—my team will be gathering information from employees and leaders about their experiences and needs at Twelve. While we intend to hold velocity as a core value during this phase, our main priority is to uphold Twelve’s safety value. Because yes, when we say safety we mean the physical safety of our lab, plant, and manufacturing teams (we are a chemical company!), but equally as important is the psychological safety of all our employees. Does everyone feel safe in expressing their experiences and voicing possible concerns? Are we all on the same page about how we’ll navigate uncomfortable conversations? How do we create an environment that allows employees to openly discuss disagreements??

To do this, we’ll need to meet folks where they are with regards to DEIB (some may be new to it whereas others will already have the language to express their nuanced experiences and concerns). No matter where employees fall in the spectrum of understanding, it’s important that we’re on this journey together. And so our work during the initial listening phase will include sharing definitions, establishing communication norms, and creating a space where it's okay to be imperfect—it’s all part of the shared learning process.?

As we begin to implement programs based on our listening and research, we’ll keep Twelve’s iteration value top of mind because ultimately application is different from research—as an organization who is evolving research into an operationalized business, we know this all too well. For our DEIB efforts, this might mean we roll out a program that doesn't land the way we intended, or doesn't have the impact we wanted it to have. This doesn’t mean throwing in the towel, but rather that we have another opportunity to ask questions and reimagine. Leaders passionate about this work often make the mistake of trying to solve all the problems at once. While it would be wonderful if we could do so, realistically, we’re much more likely to succeed if we focus our attention and create a roadmap, similar to how software companies approach launching a minimum viable product (MVP) followed by developing new features.?

With DEIB work, it’s easy to dream big, and I’m eager for the chance to be thoughtful about Twelve’s impact beyond our own workplace. For example, what if we developed learning programs in the communities where we’re building our commercial facilities—many of which have been historically underserved—as a path to help lift folks in the surrounding areas (think training historically underpaid workers to do higher-skill, higher-paid jobs)? What if we created climate and community impact criteria for potential Twelve partners such that we require companies to reimagine their definition of success to include DEIB accountability? My hope, and my team’s intention, is that the work we do in these communities inspires other corporations to consider how their DEIB efforts can elevate the populations who enable their businesses to thrive.??

Looking ahead??

Climate change has an outsized impact on underserved communities. It’s imperative that as Twelve builds toward a global solution, our teams reflect the vastly diverse planet we hope to serve—and that as an organization, we take responsibility for our potential to change how businesses think about their diversity efforts. Ultimately, my dream of dreams as a talent leader is that everyone sees Twelve as a place where they can work and thrive, and that as a company we fundamentally change the belief systems surrounding organizations' responsibility for environmental justice and decarbonizing the earth. So even though the road ahead is long, I’m energized by the DEIB journey we’re beginning.?